icelandic_adventuresfandomcom-20200215-history
Road-tripping the Land of the VIkings
This post explains everything I did in Iceland before my study abroad program in Paris. ---- Day One: Getting There :My roommate and I took a flight to Iceland on New Year’s Day. Honestly, you can’t start the year off better. Iceland has this thing where the government gives their airline incentives to offer free layovers to travelers. So we got a flight to Reykjavik and another to Paris for a grand total of… less than $400! We ended up landing in Iceland around 7 AM, and it really didn’t matter because in the winter, there’s pretty much only sunlight between 11 AM and 4 PM. In the dead of night, with frozen ice everywhere, we managed to grab our rental car – complete with snow tires – and headed off from Keflavik International to drive along the southern coast. Driving Off into the Mountains :The international airport is in Keflavik, which is on a peninsula at the southwestern most point of the country. It took us half an hour to get to the capital, and another two hours to get to ''Seljalandsfoss''. It took me visiting three waterfalls to figure out that foss probably means waterfall. Basically, you drive and drive and drive through barren land that’s picketed off for Icelandic horse farms, and then suddenly a mountain pops out of nowhere with a majestic waterfall. But once you reach this first waterfall, it turns out you’ve come across a mountain range replete with some of Iceland’s most beautiful natural sights. The way Iceland is built, you have volcanic mountains and then you have continental mountain ranges. Iceland happens to sit at the border of the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates and for this reason you have mountains that look like the conical volcanoes we all know, as well as mountain ranges that look like the Himalayas. So you have these beautiful snow-capped peaks with glacial waterfalls every couple hundred kilometers, and I have never seen a more beautiful landscape. :We spent a few more hours driving along the south coast. You get to see the Atlantic Ocean as you drive, which is pretty cool for me because that ocean is totally different in Iceland than it is in New Jersey. There are huge mountain ranges to your left, and a few hundred meters of marshy land to our right before the frigid ocean waters. Our last destination was the southern fishing town of Vik. I don’t watch Game of Thrones, but apparently the black sand beach, Reynisfjara, – which happens to be one of Time’s top 10 non-swimmable beaches – is featured on the show? Anyways, there’s about a half hour drive from our last waterfall, Skogafoss, to the beach, and that was the most interesting and crazy drive I have ever experienced. Basically, at one point we were driving along a valley, between the mainland mountain ranges and a coastal volcano, the famed Eyjafjallajökull. But this is pretty much begging for awful weather because as it so happens, the valley is a wind tunnel and even when the skies are clear, snow from the mountains blow at full force down into the valley. Begging for Trouble :It was like we drove past a vertical barrier and immediately entered a whiteout zone. We couldn’t see two feet in front of us, even with high beams turned on. Dumb as we were, we pushed on to get to a lighthouse on the coast that we really wanted to check out. Now, this lighthouse is situated at the bottom of a cliff. In order to get there, we had to drive on a very narrow, winding road over the coastal mountain. You know how sometimes you see car commercials where the road is some ridiculously winding road in the mountains? That’s exactly what ours was like, except we couldn’t see. We pushed on. At one point, there was a snowplow coming down the mountain, and we almost fell off a sharp drop trying to let it pass. The thing was, even if we kept going or turned back, both decisions involved not being able to see the road or other cars at all. We kept on pushing up, and managed to get to the top of the mountain where we encountered smarter people who had just set up shop there to ride out the storm. There was no question of the storm abating or us getting to the lighthouse, so we turned around and guessed at the turns of the road while staring at Google Maps. It took a full hour and a half to travel the distance of twenty minutes. And when we got to the point where we encountered the storm in the first place, it was like exiting a vertical wall again where on the other side, it was bright and sunny. So we got the weirdest weather disparity in Iceland in the span of two hours. We were too tired to do anything and made the four hour drive back to Keflavik. Day Two: The Golden Circle :The next day, we picked up my friend’s sister from the airport and we headed off for Golden Circle, beginning with Þingvellir National Park. To get to Þingvellir (pronounced THING-vuh-KLEER), you drive over a landscape that looks twice as desolate as Antarctica. At least Antarctica has penguins. We drove over a mountain that was pure permafrost, without an animal or plant in sight. Plus it was nighttime at 10 AM. Thingvellir is the former location of Iceland’s Viking parliament between the 700s? and the 1800s, but we weren’t really there for that. Our objective was to snorkel between the two tectonic plates, where there is a fissure full of pure glacial water called ''Silfra''. The water is 34 degrees Fahrenheit, so pretty much the minimum temperature for it to not freeze. We three met our tour guide, Nigel, and his assistant Claire. They were both Brits, and their job was to get us into the water and out for half an hour, without freezing to death, and to take the greatest pictures in the world. For the first part, we got our money’s worth. We were shoved into an insulating layer and then a dry suit, which for the most part kept us pretty warm. In the water, we got to see incredible structures – underwater cathedrals of stone, narrow passageways between continents, and glacial water that was pure enough to drink. Nigel spent the entire time taking pictures of us in various poses, at one point telling us to touch both plates and pose (my friend’s sister was too short to reach, funnily enough). It was a unique experience, snorkeling in freezing cold water, but definitely worth it and warmer than we expected. Nigel promised us that he would send us our amazing pictures later that night, and Claire treated us to hot chocolate and cookies once we got out and changed. :After leaving the park, we drove a few more hours to get to our next attraction, ''Geysir'', and its brother, ''Strokkur''. Geysir happens to be the original namesake of geysers around the world, and even though it doesn’t erupt anymore, Strokkur gave us a nice blast of water. There’s a video posted on my friend’s Insta of water being shot 30 meters into the air. I’ve never been in near hot springs where the outside air temperature is below freezing and the temperature below ground is above boiling, which was cool to see but ominous because our next destination was the famous ''Gullfoss'', gem of the Golden Circle. Remember foss means waterfall? I wonder if gull means effing huge because Gullfoss is Niagara Falls split into levels. The river feeding into it is super wide and so the falls itself is wide as well. You get to see the falls by standing directly across from it, and we got there around dusk so there was a weird, hazy glow on the water. The wind was awful and it hurt to just stand outside, but Gullfoss completed our Golden Circle tour and was pretty majestic. Day Three: The Good Life :Our last day in Iceland was a gorgeous day with blue skies and icy roads, and we set off for a tomato-based restaurant two hours from Keflavik. To get there, we drove through the valley in the center of Iceland, and it was oddly peaceful. There were mountains in the distance on all four sides, but every half hour or so, we’d drive by small Icelandic valley towns. The road was lined with trees, and the road trip was the best we had experienced the entire trip. When we got to the place, we walked into a giant greenhouse flush with Edison bulbs and tomato vines everywhere. The place was packed with candlelit tables and people were stuffing themselves with five types of bread, endless tomato soup, and fresh garlic from potted plants at the tables. I ordered myself a tomato shot that involved a half piece of tomato that was filled with schnapps. We three stuffed ourselves with fresh, piping hot creamy tomato soup made from the very tomatoes we could see growing around us next to the table. I ordered dessert that was vanilla ice cream smothered with sweet tomato juice. I never imagined I’d eat a purely tomato-based lunch, but it was surprisingly diverse in the types of food that were offered. Aperitif, main course, and dessert all involved some form of tomato, and it was easily the best food we had in Iceland. Our server later told us that the particular greenhouse was the second largest supplier of tomatoes to Icelandic markets, which was fascinating because being a volcanic island, Iceland has to import most of their produce during the winter months. The greenhouse also had a horse farm, and if there’s one type of fauna we got to see a lot of in our travels in the frozen country, it was Icelandic horses. These horses are the epitome of beauty, being extremely furry and elegant. They are unique because they’re the only breed of horse in the world to be able to perform five gaits. For this reason, they are the world’s premier show horse, but sadly once they leave the country, an Icelandic horse cannot return because the government fears the entry of disease that endemic horses haven’t yet been exposed to. We got up close and personal with a few of the females, as well as two male show horses who were viciously aggressive. The entire time we watched those horses (about 45 minutes), the two male horses bit and kicked each other in the face and rear until one of them submitted in pain. It was shockingly intriguing, but being so close to such beautiful and powerful animals was an experience that will be hard to forget. :We eventually set off back to Keflavik along the southern coast route. The road twisted along the Atlantic Ocean, sometimes driving over bridges spanning little inlets that led to large lakes set against the backdrop of snow-capped mountains. We would occasionally spot solitary lighthouses sitting on the edge of the water, and the odd freight cargo ship anchored a few hundred meters offshore. The final approach to Keflavik allowed us to drive to the top of a volcanic mountain peak and then come winding down through a valley between mountains and back into the southwestern peninsula of Iceland. In such a manner, we made our way to the luxury spa called the [[Wikipedia:Blue Lagoon|''Blue Lagoon'']], the premier attraction of the country and honestly the thing we had been most looking forward to. The Blue Lagoon :The Blue Lagoon is like a little city full of tourists. When we walked in, we were each handed a towel and instructed to shower off, put on our bathing suits, and then to lock all of our stuff away. We had wristbands that designated the class of ticket we had bought, and our particular wristbands allowed us to get one cocktail at the minibar, unlimited mud masks, and an algae mask. I think that soaking in the wonderfully warm waters of the lagoon while taking in the mountainous scenery and the stars in the sky at dusk was an experience that anyone going to Iceland should dish out for. Three days of driving and braving the harsh winter winds of the north were cleansed and eased through three hours of soaking in the comforting spa waters. It was a fitting end to our short but eventful trip to the country of Vikings, a classy and yet natural soothing experience. There are few places in the world where you can pair nature so well with a basic’s lifestyle, and Iceland is without a doubt such a place.